Words, pattern, and moving pictures

In 2020, I was inspired to combine some of my pattern, writing, and textile projects into blended works. I contacted filmmaker, Tal Day, to see if he would be interested in collaborating on a short spoken word project. He chose one of my recent poems and began putting together found clips, sound, and original guitar for Never Arriving.

At about the same time, I developed a panel-based pattern that was perfect for a textile bandana project I had been considering for some time.

Digitizing a pattern like this is always a dance between natural gestures and refined forms to find something that feels energetic and authentic. Illustrator’s autotrace tool is sometimes a help, but I always end up manually adjusting nearly every anchor point.

Adding the poem and my photos to the project was a slow and natural progression.

I contacted Tal to see if the panel graphic would work within the developing video, and the project began to take on exciting dimension. Click play below to experience how the words and pictures come together.

If you’d rather read the poem, it’s posted here.

Another words+pictures bandana has been completed—the second of a planned series of three. I’ll share a process story for that one on the blog soon.